


Of Wanting And Misunderstanding

by Not From Stars (Shadowcat)



Category: Push (2009)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-24
Updated: 2011-12-24
Packaged: 2017-10-28 00:07:20
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,096
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/301581
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shadowcat/pseuds/Not%20From%20Stars
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's been almost five years since Hong Kong and Cassie can't keep pretending that she doesn't have feelings for Nick. When it becomes too painful to keep with things the way they are, she decides maybe they should part ways since he doesn't want her -- but doesn't want anyone else to have her, either.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Of Wanting And Misunderstanding

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Saeva](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Saeva/gifts).



> I LOVE _Push_. It's one of my favorite movies and I was thrilled to be able to write something for a fellow fan and shipper. This became slightly more angstier than what I had planned, but I hope that you still enjoy it.

The thing about being a Watcher was that sometimes you didn’t always see everything. Sometimes, you only got glimpses of what was coming, but now the how or the why of it.

Cassie Holmes was more or less used to that drawback of the powers she had.

The problem was that she didn’t like it when she got glimpses of the things that were coming for her in the future – and had no idea how they worked out or what brought them up.

Cassie was fifteen when she first saw the vision of something she had been hoping for since she first met Nick.

It was only a secret to Nick how she felt about him. Everyone else that had been with them for any length of time could see that she was in love with him. Of course, the one time anyone had mentioned it, Nick had thrown them through a wall.

“She’s _fourteen_!” Nick had snarled at Pinky. “She’s a kid and I’d kill anyone who tried anything with her. Cassie is like my sister!”

That had definitely put a crimp on Cassie telling him the truth about her personal feelings about anything having to do with them. What girl wants to hear that the guy she was wanting to kiss more than anything thought of her as his sister?

She saw the vision. She saw Nick pinning her up against a wall and he was kissing her for all he was worth. His hands were moving down the sides of her body …

…and that was where the vision always ended.

It caused her no shortage of sleepless and frustrated nights.

When she was sixteen, she got her first real kiss.

She was in a club, dancing and celebrating their latest success against Division. The music was loud and she was feeling more energized than she had felt in a long time. She was having a good time and when the boy she had been dancing with most of the night pulled her down into his lap, she laughed. When he ran his hands through her hair and kissed her, she was caught off guard. It was a nice kiss and she was relaxing into it when she saw a flash through her mind.

Unfortunately for the guy kissing her, Nick moved faster than her vision had.

Cassie was jerked up and shoved behind Nick as his fist flew at her would be Romeo.

 

“You can’t keep doing this!”

She was seventeen now and she and Nick had been thrown out of _another_ club for fighting. As usual, Nick picked the fight and Cassie tried to keep him from killing someone over something stupid.

“Doing what?” Nick demanded peevishly as he looked at her from the couch he had dropped down onto.

“Picking fights with any guy who touches me,” she snapped, throwing a wash cloth at him so he could clean the blood off his split lip. “That was the fifth place we’ve been kicked out of in New York in six months.”

“I’m just looking out for you like I promised you I would,” Nick pointed out, holding the cold and wet wash cloth against his lip.

“News flash, Nick! I’m not some scared little girl of thirteen any longer! I don’t need you to be constantly vigilant over me.”

“And look what happened the last time I wasn’t.”

Cassie just stared at him. “The last time?”

“After we left Hong Kong.” His eyes were full of emotion as he looked at her.

“Christ, Nick. That was four years ago.”

“You lost a month of your life and was almost destroyed four years ago.”

“It wasn’t your fault.” She leaned against the wall, shaking her head. “You couldn’t have known that any of Division’s men were there. Hell, I never saw them coming.”

“They almost killed you.”

“But they didn’t. You found me and got me to safety before they could do any permanent damage.”

“They still got you and they still hurt you,” he said stubbornly. “There’s no denying that fact.”

Cassie had had enough of this. Enough of the fear and the guilt and the fact that she was never going to get what she wanted no matter what her visions showed her.

“You know, I get that you don’t want me, but quit fucking it up when someone else does.”

Nick dropped his hand. “What?”

“You heard me,” she said, her voice tired. “You don’t want me, that’s fine. But quit using some misplaced guilt over something neither one of us could control as a god damned excuse to keep a wall between us. Division will always be after us and we will always be fighting them. We’ll get hurt and we’ll see others die, but I’m tired of feeling like I have to walk on eggshells around you, Nick.”

“You’re a kid.” His voice didn’t seem as convinced as his words did.

“I haven’t been a kid for a long time, Nick. I wasn’t even a kid when I was a kid. I’ve been on my own for longer than we’ve known each other. You can’t keep pushing me further and further away from you and then get pissed off when some other guy takes interest in me. It’s not your place to decide who I kiss or when.”

There was silence in the room for a long time and Cassie finally sighed, shaking her head. “I’m going to bed,” she said quietly. “You should, too. It’s going to be a long couple of days.” She pushed herself away from the wall and started to head to her room.

“Cassie.”

It was just one word, just her name, but it sounded different when he said it this time. She barely managed to turn around before he had grabbed her and backed her against the wall again. She looked up at him and his face was just inches from hers.

“You think I don’t want you?” His voice was husky and there was an undercurrent to it that she had never heard before.

“You’ve made that pretty obvious,” she pointed out. “If it’s that hard to be around me, you should just tell me. I’ll pack up and go and you’ll never be bothered with me again.”

Those were words she never thought she would ever say to Nick, but she was just so damn _tired_ of fighting this emotional fight over and over again. Even someone in love as much as she was in love with him had their limits.

“No,” Nick’s voice shook only slightly, and she picked up on it because she knew him so well. “Cassie, don’t go. I don’t want you to go anywhere. I wouldn’t know what to do if you weren’t here.”

“I’m tired of being a responsibility or a job for you, Nick. You say you don’t want me to leave, but it’s not like you want me to stay either.”

She looked away, hating that she sounded so weak at this point. She was supposed to be really good at hiding her feelings by now. She should have just gathered up her stuff and slipped out when he was asleep. It would be a lot less humiliating than this was.

Nick’s hand came up and he gently caught her chin, turning her face back to his so she would meet his eyes. “I don’t want –"

“Me, I know.” She tried to pull away, but he wouldn’t let her.

“For a Watcher, you can be so blind,” he murmured. “I was going to say that I didn’t want you to leave. I don’t ever want you to leave.”

“I can’t keep pretending to be your sister, Nick,” Cassie finally said. “I just can’t do it.”

“My sister? I don’t think of you as my sister, Cassie.”

“You told Pinky you did.”

“No, I did not.”

“You did, too.” She had a very clear memory of the conversation in question.

“When?”

“When we were in Shanghai.”

He just stared at her. “Cassie, you were fourteen years old and Pinky had just asked me if I was ever going to do anything with you besides be your muscle. He was implying that I should seduce you or something.”

“No, that wasn’t what he meant,” she corrected, now understanding some of the tension between Nick and her other best male friend. “He just thought that you should put a claim on me or something until I was old enough for whatever. He said that if it was him he would make it clear and then wait as long as he needed to for me to be old enough.”

“So I told him that you were like my sister so that he would keep his hands and plans off of you.” It made sense in Nick’s head.

“He didn’t want me like that, Nick,” she said as evenly as she could. “There is a lot of that going around.”

“And now we get back to how blind and oblivious you can be,” he said as he shook his head. “Cass, I want you and I have wanted you for some time.”

“You certainly have never acted like it.”

“Because it made me feel like some kind of pervert,” he said with a frown. “I’ve known you since you were thirteen and I’ve seen you deal with things that no one should have to go through. I promised you that I would take care of you and keep you safe and then I started feeling like I was someone you needed to be kept safe from. That feeling nearly tore me apart so I decided that I needed to be more careful.”

“Huh?” Her usual attitude and eloquence were both at a loss for words over the confusion that he was causing.

Now that he had her full attention, Nick let go of her chin, but only so that he could stroke her cheek. “There’s kind of an age difference between us, Cassie.”

“Age is just a number that doesn’t matter in our world.”

“But when you were fourteen it did and the things I was feeling made me feel like the worst kind of person imaginable.” He sighed. “So I did my best to be extra careful. I didn’t realize that I was pushing you away or making you feel like I didn’t want you around.”

“You did and it hurt, Nick.” Cassie said carefully. “All of this time …”

“All of this time I was trying to protect you from me.”

“I didn’t need protection _from_ you, Nick. I never have. You would never have done anything that would have hurt me.” She looked up at him. “No matter what you were feeling or thinking, you wouldn’t have acted on it until I was ready for it.”

“Yeah, well, the idea that I might was enough to scare me.”

“But not enough for you to refrain from trying to pummel any guy who looked at me in what you thought was the wrong way.”

“Some of them did more than look,” Nick reminded her. “Just because I couldn’t and wouldn’t do anything to make you uncomfortable around me didn’t mean they had the same kind of limits.”

“You were jealous.” His reactions to things over the last year or so made a lot more sense now.

“Maybe,” he said, shifting slightly. “The point is …”

“What?”

“Stay, Cassie,” he said softly. “Don’t go.”

Cassie looked up at him again and then moved her hand to cover his against her face. “If you’re sure you want me around and I’m not going to have to keep walking on eggshells with you.”

His smile was a small one and there was something tentative in his movements as he brought his other hand to place against the wall beside her. It only took him a moment to shift and then bring his mouth against hers in the gentlest of actions. When Cassie made a soft noise in her throat and responded by pulling him closer to her, Nick slowly deepened the kiss. The reality of this moment was so much better than any of her visions had come close to being. There was something sweet and endearing about how careful Nick was with her – now that she knew that he had been feeling just as strongly for her as she felt for him.

It was several moments before Nick broke the kiss and then he rested his forehead against hers.

“This changes things, you know,” he finally said.

“I know,” Cassie responded. “This means I’m not sleeping alone tonight.”


End file.
